


Peril

by entanglednow



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-11
Updated: 2008-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheppard was currently having <i>one of those days</i> with Lorne, which made an interesting change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peril

It was another one of those days.

Sheppard was currently having one of those days with Lorne, which made an interesting change.

They were currently trapped in a room with electrified walls, that was gradually getting smaller and smaller. By virtue of its ominous shifting walls.

So maybe Lorne wasn't finding the change of pace quite as interesting as Sheppard.

Sheppard had taken to thinking of situations like this, as the Pegasus galaxy's idea of amusing whimsy. If he ever actually thought he might die in situations like this, he was fairly sure the whimsy would wear off.

"To be honest I thought stuff like this only happened to you," Lorne said carefully.

"Stuff like this being the homicidal Ancient technology, hilarious misunderstandings and the interesting peril?" Sheppard hazarded.

Lorne nodded. "Yeah, pretty much that."

There was a pause.

"I may have even thought, a time or two, that you were making it up," Lorne dared to add.

Sheppard wasn't sure you could make stuff like this up.

The Ancients had been strange people with too much advanced technology and far too much time on their hands. Also he secretly suspected most of them had actually been completely insane.

The walls weren't currently making their way towards them, but only because Sheppard had jammed his gun into one of the gaps where the walls were, temporarily preventing them from sliding together.

Lorne's uniform jacket was still laid sadly on the floor in the middle of the room, charred and smoking. Escape Plan Number 7 had been a bust.

"We came across a wall that melted people a while back," Sheppard offered, when he thought the silence had dragged on too long.

"A wall that melted people?" Lorne sounded cautiously intrigued.

"Yeah." Sheppard scratched the back of his neck. "Though Rodney managed to turn it off before it did any melting."

"Dr McKay knows how to think under pressure," Lorne agreed sensibly.

"He seemed to think more well than usual under the threat of melting." Because really, who wanted to be melted?

Lorne stretched his own legs out, boots just off the edge of Sheppard's.

"Mostly we just find empty ruins, friendly locals, or we get attacked by the Wraith."

"Ah, the Wraith," Sheppard said. "Some days we can only wish for the Wraith."

Sheppard's gun creaked sharply.

They both stopped talking and looked at it, but nothing happened for half a minute.

Lorne's gun had been eaten half an hour ago. Crushed into a mush of black metal and plastic and devoured, leaving only tiny shards of it to rain down and ping off of the electrified walls, with little accompanying sparks.

Sheppard took a breath.

"Maybe there's a-"

His gun snapped with two sudden cracks. The wall chewed up the pieces, before continuing its slow, ominous journey towards them.

Sheppard sighed. Yeah, definitely one of those days.

"How long do you think?" Lorne asked quietly.

The space between both walls was shifting at a slow but precise rate.

"Couple of hours?" Sheppard guessed.

"How long do you think it would take a jumper to get here?"

There was a significant pause.

"Couple of hours." Which was generous, it was probably more.

"Do you think they sent one?"

Sheppard really hoped they had done.

"Sure," he said.

Lorne's boots squeaked against each other.

Sheppard rolled his shoulders against the wall and debated whether they should be thinking up an Escape Plan Number Ten. And what exactly it would be if they did. Escape plans 7 through 9 had been kind of crazy as it was. They'd been reaching, there were only so many ways to stop a giant electrified wall from crushing you.

"You'd think that the fact that the room gradually gets smaller would be enough. Making the walls electrified just seems unnecessary," Lorne said quietly.

Sheppard grunted.

"Maybe they're being kind, electrocuting us so we can't feel ourselves being slowly crushed to death."

Lorne seemed to think about that for a minute, leant back on his hands looking for all the world like he was sitting somewhere thousands of miles away, and not under the threat of immediate peril.

Sheppard had known there was something he liked about him.

"That's kind of them."

"Yeah."

There was another long pause.

Sheppard sighed.

"What else have you got in your pockets?"

Lorne stretched a leg out and started unzipping and un-velcro-ing.

"Spare ammo, matches, first aid kit, batteries-" He set them all down on the bare floor between them. And went rustling back inside to see what else he could find.

It turned out he could find a lot.

Did uniforms even have that many pockets?

Lorne apparently took the 'being prepared' thing seriously.

Sheppard was proud, slightly bemused over where he was keeping it all, but proud.

A bright red tube rolled about in the middle.

Sheppard picked it up, pulled the cap off.

It was lip balm, a quick sniff revealed it to be cherry flavour.

One of the glossy, slippery ones that got everywhere, if you kissed someone wearing it.

He raised an eyebrow at Lorne, who grinned and shrugged.

There wasn't anything that immediately came to mind as equipment for a daring escape attempt, or sadly even anything that was edible.

"So, what do you want to do until we're rescued, or until we can think of another plan that isn't crazy?" Sheppard asked.

Lorne shrugged

"I'm easy," he said smoothly. "I'll do whatever you want."

Sheppard looked at him sideways.

But Lorne was staring at the other wall and tapping his boot. Looking for all the world like that had been a completely innocuous statement.

Or had it been.

...

Sheppard suspected he'd been in way too many imminent peril situations. Also, he couldn't seem to stop fiddling with the lip balm, so he set it down.

Lorne twisted his head on the wall and looked at him.

It probably hadn't been an innocuous statement.

But they weren't supposed to fraternise on duty.

Technically they weren't supposed to fraternise at all.

He thought about bringing it up, but it turned out Lorne had spooky mind-reading powers.

"It's usually excused by the imminent peril," he said quietly.

Which was true, there'd been a lot of fraternisation excused for imminent peril...and stress reactions, and viruses, and sex pollen, and aliens-made-them-do-it. But there was probably something disapproving in the rules somewhere, about making a habit of it.

"Still we're commanding officers, we're supposed to be beyond giving in to...imminent peril." Sheppard hazarded. He thought maybe he'd started failing at sounding sensible, if he ever had done.

Lorne didn't seem to mind.

"I know I'm not usually part of your imminent peril," he said quietly, and he sounded almost apologetic. Which was, in some way, terribly wrong because Sheppard had seen Lorne folded under one of the showers, and-

Sheppard was a bad commanding officer.

A really bad commanding officer.

"Still it'd probably get complicated if we survived," he pointed out sensibly, or possibly reached for desperately.

"Only if you wanted it to, since you're technically my superior," Lorne said, in such a sensible tone of voice, that Sheppard was no longer entirely sure what they were even talking about.

"Yeah," he said stupidly.

"And you already know I can follow orders," Lorne added. Which was, to be fair, an unnecessary addition.

'You want me to give you orders?' Sheppard didn't say that out loud. Though his brain briefly became disconnected, and skidded completely off track, wondering if Lorne really did want to be given orders and exactly which orders he wanted to be given.

And how far exactly he'd follow them?

Sheppard realised he hadn't said anything for a really long time.

"Yeah," he said again instead.

And if he had some sort of list then he could cross off 'wildly and unexpectedly aroused while trapped in a room waiting for impending death.'

He'd bet Rodney had a list. He was a list sort of guy.

Sheppard cleared his throat.

"What exactly do you mean?" he asked quietly.

Lorne tipped his head sideways.

"I mean, sir, that you can fuck me if you want to."

Sheppard couldn't speak for a very long minute.

Though he was fairly sure Lorne could hear him breathing.

"Ok," he said at last.

Lorne flicked the little red tube across the floor. It rolled and rolled and rolled. Then came to a stop against Sheppard's boot.

A really, really bad commanding officer.


End file.
